


In the Quiet Moments

by EuphoricSound



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-02
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EuphoricSound/pseuds/EuphoricSound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is stressed, Clint is intent on helping her relax</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Quiet Moments

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so so much to sidhera for reading through this and making wonderful edits/suggestions. Cotton Candy Bingo prompt: Shoulder Rub

It had been a long day and a hard mission. Still, she and her partner had done extremely well. They’d gathered the intel they’d been sent to procure and not a shot was fired, but some missions were just harder than others. In Moscow, missions were difficult; her shoulders were tighter, her focus was harder to maintain, and the streets were steeped in memories. 

Natasha stood in the shower of her hotel room, back against the tiled wall, and closed her eyes as the hot water rushed over her. In one maudlin moment, she imagined the memories sloughing off and following the soap and grime down the drain. But the moment the thought occurred to her, she mastered herself. She had a history, but so did everyone. Her past was not something that would change, and she had shed too much blood trying to balance the ledger to look back now. With a sigh, she pressed away from the wall and turned off the water, reaching out for a towel to dry off. As she reached up to wring some of the water from her long, red locks, she felt a sharp tug in her upper back and let out a soft hiss. She might be resolute in her decision not to be weighed down by her history, but her shoulders reminded her of the tension she’d allowed to creep in over the course of the day. 

She wrapped the towel about her torso and emerged from the bathroom to find Clint sitting on her bed, wearing cargo pants and a dark gray t-shirt. A laptop was perched on his legs. He glanced up at her and she caught his eyes sweep over her before he turned his gaze back to the computer. She felt a smile creep into the corners of her mouth. They had been sharing a bed for over a year, but Clint never took the sight of her body for granted. 

“Hey, Nat.” He said softly, smiling up at her from under his eyebrows. “Just sending the report off to HQ so that we can be done with it. Want to take a look?”

Natasha thought a moment, then shook her head. “No, I know you’re thorough. Send away, bird man.” She said with a smirk as she approached the bed, lifted a comb from the nightstand, and started working it quickly through the long tangles, grimacing in irritation as her unruly hair seemed content on prolonging the process. She heard a few more clicks from the keyboard and the sound of the laptop closing before Clint let out an exasperated sigh. 

“So, you’re ripping out all your hair, eh? Bald will be a nice look for you.” 

“Can it, Barton. You have no appreciation for what it is like to have hair like this.” She pointed the comb at him accusingly, but she smiled. Clint was a good friend. His was possibly the only true, deep friendship she’d ever allowed herself to have. In their line of work, real friendships did not develop easily or often, but with Clint, she could relax her guard and be comfortable in her own skin.

He rose from the bed with a wolf-like grace, grabbed the end of the comb and used her grip on it to pull her close. Tilting his face down so that it hovered in inch from hers, he smiled in that way of his that just…disarmed her. “Oh, I assure you, Agent Romanoff, I have plenty of appreciation for your hair.” She felt her eyelids shutter as her traitorous body responded immediately to his proximity and tone. 

She didn’t have much time to think about it though, because he plucked the comb from her grasp and brought his hands down to her hips. Spinning her around, he drew her down to sit in front of him on the bed. And then she felt a tug as Clint began to finish working the tangles out of her hair (much more gently than she’d been doing herself). 

It was so unexpected that she froze, spine poker straight, eyes wide. This immediately felt vulnerable to her; intimate in a way they hadn’t been before. But it had been a long day, and it was Clint, and it felt so good… so she slowly allowed herself to close her eyes as he gently combed through her tresses, spending much longer than he needed drawing the teeth of the comb gently over her scalp after the tangles had been dealt with. She felt him move closer then, bringing his legs forward to frame hers, which were already crossed in front of her. 

Clint put the comb down and gathered her hair so that he could drape it over her shoulder. Then he brought his hands up to her back, pressing his thumbs just to the insides of her shoulder blades where the worst of the tension had pooled and knotted. She let out a soft moan. He immediately slackened the pressure and simply let his hands rest on her back. 

“I know, Tasha.” Clint’s voice was soft. “For what it’s worth, you were brilliant today. But… I know Moscow’s tough.”

Maybe it was the light touch of his hands on her back, or the way he used his nickname for her, but she realized that he did know. And that’s why he’d been waiting in her room. Not to show her the report, but because he never missed anything. She didn’t have to confess anything to him, didn’t have to drudge up the past or explain her tension to him. Clint simply knew. And she knew him as well, she realized. They worked together like a machine in the field, and out of the field they were beginning to fit together in different ways, anticipating and reading each other in these quiet moments as well as they did in a firefight. 

Just as these thoughts were taking a turn for the serious, he increased the pressure of his hands between her shoulders again, drawing the towel down around her hips and pressing into her bared back to work out the knots justas methodically as he had dealt with the tangles in her hair, and she couldn’t think anymore. She let out an audible sigh as she relaxed into his hands, the tension slowly draining away. 

He rubbed along the sides of her spine with the heels of his hands and she purred her approval. When the last of the knots had released, Clint leaned forward and kissed the nape of her neck. Eyes still closed, Natasha drew in a deep, deep breath of relief. They sat like this, the seconds bleeding into minutes, and the how many didn’t matter. She felt his hand reach around and come to rest on her bare stomach, drawing her back as he began to kiss the back of her neck again, interspersing the feather light touches of his lips with little nips that made her skin prickle and her blood begin to hum.

She tilted her head back to rest on his shoulder, shifting her stomach forward into his hand with a soft exhale. Taking this as permission, he slipped his hand lower, gently sliding his fingers against her mound and causing her to inhale sharply as she leaned her head back more forcefully into his shoulder. When he skimmed his other hand up over her breast, her hips bucked up into him of their own accord. 

Clint took his time with her, fingers moving in slow circles between her legs as the other hand teased her breasts, and despite feeling relaxed from his work on her shoulders, soon the sensation was not nearly enough. She dug her fingernails into his outer thighs as she lifted her head up from his shoulder, leveraging her hips up harder into his hand.

He chuckled. “Easy, easy, Tash. Relax, sweetheart. Let me do this for you.” She could feel the infuriating smile in his voice as he wrapped an arm about her, pulling her back and holding her still against his chest. But she leaned back into him again with a sigh. She had already allowed herself some vulnerability this evening, and it hadn’t destroyed her. As soon as she brought her hands back to rest on his legs, he lowered his mouth into the curve of her neck, and dipped two long fingers inside of her. 

Her exhale become a moan as he pressed just there. Clint’s smile against her skin became wider, and she might have been irritated at that if her mind wasn’t beginning to fray at the edges with the sensation, might have been embarrassed if his fingers hadn’t started moving in and out of her, if his mouth hadn’t begun an exploration of her neck from earlobe to shoulder, if his other arm wasn’t so tight around her. 

He began to quicken his pace, and she reached down to grip the covers on either side of his legs, uncaring that she was moaning out his name alongside other mindless affirmations because she could feel a coiling in her lower abdomen, and as she felt herself approaching the edge of orgasm, he suddenly twisted his fingers slightly, bore down with the heel of his hand, and bit down on her shoulder. Something in her brain shorted out. She fell apart against him, crying out as she came while he drew out her pleasure as long as he could.

He withdrew his hand and wrapped both arms around her as she slumped back, coming down with a contented sigh. 

“Better?” Clint said after a moment. And she was, she realized. That the tension was utterly wrung from her body was a vast relief, but there was another ache that Clint eased just…by being Clint. But it was late, and it had been a long day, and Natasha wasn’t quite sure she wanted to follow that particular line of thought into more complicated waters just now. Instead, she gently turned around in his arms and kissed him lightly on the lips. 

“Yes,” she smiled. “Clint…” She reached for words of gratitude that wouldn’t quite form a sentence, but Clint Barton never missed a thing. His mouth stretched into a smile full of genuine warmth and affection, and Natasha felt her heart contract.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him again, flickering her tongue out across his lips, deepening the kiss as his mouth parted for her. Finding the hem of his shirt, she broke the kiss just long enough to pull the material up over his head, lifted herself up out of his lap just long enough to let him shuck pants and boxers. 

Then he was pulling her back to him again, fisting his hands in her hair as he brought her mouth back to his in a kiss that left her knees quaking. Ah, yes. Clint did have a healthy appreciation for her hair, after all. 

She began to angle her hips down to his, but he growled a small protest against her lips, moving his hands down to her waist and lightly flipping her onto her back. He nudged her legs apart and gently settled down between them, watching her face intently. He still wanted this to be about her, she realized. A soft smile crept across her lips as she met his gaze. 

Then he was kissing her again, slowly pushing up into her, and they began to move together. More often than not, they brought adrenaline and fire and the frenzy of battle with them into bed, and their romps left her breathless and spent. Tonight, it was…sweet. There was a soft contentment that flowed between them, a deep enjoyment of being together.

She wrapped her arms around his neck as he skimmed his mouth over her jaw and the side of her throat, and the way he was moving inside of her felt maddeningly good. When she lifted her legs to hook them around his waist, drawing him closer, he moaned into the side of her neck and brought his mouth back to hers for a searing kiss. She opened her eyes to find him gazing back at her with an intensity that made her tighten the grip of her arms around him. When they slipped over the edge, their names were whispered on each other’s lips, and Natasha found that she was still left breathless, but for wholly different reasons. 

They didn’t speak a word as they used her discarded towel to clean up. Clint slid beside her into bed, gathering her up in his arms and pulling her close, idly running his fingers through her hair. Tomorrow, she would let herself wonder about the sudden emotion that had crept up between them. For the moment, she was more relaxed than she had been since they’d been given this assignment, and the warmth of Clint’s arms around her, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her cheek were enough to hold those thoughts off. So she pressed a kiss into his collarbone and let sleep wash over her.


End file.
